Basic Joomla ACL support for any component

Meanwhile six months passed since I wrote the articles "Is your extension really Joomla 1.7 ready?" and "How to add basic ACL support to your extension". In those articles I urged that extensions should support at least two Joomla ACL core permissions, Configure (to configure the access settings) and Access Administration Interface (to define the access), to deserve the Joomla 1.7 / Joomla 2.5 compatible label. Without support for these actions the Joomla ACL system become worthless for webmasters because it is not possible to customize the backend access for User Groups (to specific components only for example).

Minimum ACL requirements for Joomla components

So, anything changed in six months?

Not that much as I hoped... The articles have been read many times and users shared the article with instructions to add basic ACL support with developers of extensions multiple times. The good news is that more extension support basic ACL, the downside is that too many still not offer basic ACL at all. Even some very popular Joomla extensions, while adding ACL support can be done in about 15 minutes.

People are looking for basic ACL support!

The call for basic ACL support is getting stronger each month. People are getting more used to the Joomla ACL each day and are using it more and more in their projects. Each week I receive support requests to ask if it is really not possible to set the permissions for component X, and normally my reply was to contact the developer of component X to add basic ACL support. But that is changing now...!

ACL support for any component via ACL Manager

In the past weeks I have been working on ACL Manager 1.2.0. One of the major new features is basic ACL support for any component. The new version of ACL Manager is able to detect if a component supports Joomla ACL. If it doesn't offer basic ACL out of the box you will be able to set the permissions for 'Configure' and 'Access Administration Interface' via ACL Manager.

Basic Joomla ACL support via ACL Manager 1.2.0

The ACL Manager icon next to the components name indicates that the basic ACL support is added via ACL Manager. It works exactly the same as configuring permissions for any other component. Just click on the name of the component and you will be able to set the permissions.

Set the permissions for any component via ACL Manager 1.2.0

When a user is not allowed to access the administration interface for a component it will not be visible in the menu, and direct access by entering an url will be denied via the ACL Manager plugin.

ACL Manager 1.2.0 available next week

Basic ACL support for any component is part of ACL Manager 1.2.0, which will be released next week and will include several other features and improvements as well. Finally you will be able to set permissions for ZOO, JomSocial, DOCman, Xmap and many other extensions that don't offer basic ACL support out of the box!

Written by Sander Potjer

Sander Potjer is the developer of ACL Manager for Joomla. Sander Potjer's passion for Joomla! began back in 2005 when he designed and built a Joomla! web site for his rowing team. His involvement with the Joomla! community started in 2008 as co-founder of the local Dutch community. More about Sander Potjer.